NEW-TRITION: Anschutz Health and Wellness Center offers classes to make good stuff even better for you

AURORA | The cooking tips were simple but useful, advice that covered how to avoid tears when cutting an onion and how to avoid picking up a smell on your fingers when cutting garlic.

The cooking demonstration held Sept. 26 at the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center included basic kitchen lessons that would have fit in any basic cable cooking show. Held in the top-of-the-line public demo kitchen on the ground floor of the 94,000-square-foot facility on East Montview Boulevard that opened in April, the inaugural public lesson included step-by-step instructions on how to prepare simple recipes. Dietitians led the audience through the preparation of a simple and quick marinara sauce and an autumn chutney that featured apples, pears, ginger and coriander seeds.

The real intent of the demo, titled “Saucy September,” went deeper than convenience or speediness. The inaugural lesson in a planned series, the session was designed to offer healthy options for those looking to learn new approaches in the kitchen. Led by Wellness Center dietitian Kristen Frie and fitness specialist Liz Hatch, the public cooking demo had nutrition and education at its heart.

“We’ve got folks who work here who have interests that are outside their daily job … What we want to do is ignite our demo kitchen and reach out to our community for free education,” said Kim Gorman, a registered dietitian at the Wellness Center. “We want to reach out to the folks who are near our building and meet their needs. We’re asking what kind of things are they interested in having. Is it quick, easy meals? Is it sodium reduced? Is it heart healthy?”

The staff at the Wellness Center will address those questions through the facility’s wide menu of resources. Those include a metabolic kitchen, a grocery lab sponsored by King Soopers and other tools designed to study visitors’ dining and shopping habits. The center will serve as a focal point for nutritional studies and clinical work tied to diet. The demo series is designed to fit in with that research, Gorman said.

“We’re going to couple our grocery lab with educational tours on how to take the contents of the grocery store to bring it to life here in our kitchen,” Gorman said. “Folks can basically go from the aisle and the shelf to their plates.”

The scope of the instruction was more straightforward for the first demo event in the series. About 20 people sat in the stools in front of the public kitchen, and watched close-up footage of Frie and Hatch preparing the two dishes that was beamed on large screens set up on the wall of the lobby.

“I was very interested in this as a dietitian, in the message that healthy eating can be tasty, as well as easy and doable in 30 minutes,” Frie said, adding that part of the approach included tips on how to lower salt content in standard ingredients. “Part of the purposeful preparation that we are trying to spread the word about is using techniques and products that can reduce sugar and salt.”

Those steps could be as simple as using low-sodium spices and relying more heavily on vegetables. The autumn chutney recipe had a sodium count of 85 milligrams for a serving of 16, and the marinara sauce had a sodium count of 960 milligrams for a serving of 8.

“You can stock your pantry so you have the spices and vegetables instead of going to a salt packet,” Hatch said. “We want people to say, ‘I know how to use basil, I know how to use nutmeg.’ If you are going online and using a recipe, you don’t have to use it as it is. You can start by lowering the sugar content and seasoning it to taste.”

Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at
agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707